Summary The Federalist Papers are a collection of essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in support of the Constitution drafted in 1787, over a decade after the Declaration of Independence. With the benefit of hindsight, historical events and structures can often seem predetermined, obscuring the many decisions that had to be made along the way. The journey of the United States from independence to forming a federal government was not a straight path. The land won by the Revolutionary War consisted of 13 colonies, newly rebranded as “states.” Each state had adopted its own constitution shortly after rebelling against the British crown. These individual states were loosely united during the Revolutionary War under the Articles of Confederation, which defined a weak central government and functioned more like a treaty than a true organizing principle. This absence of centralized energy resulted in many inefficiencies during both war and peace. It may seem obvious now, but for the governors of these separate states, the idea of surrendering autonomy and assuming shared responsibility with neighboring states was far from intuitive. Thus, the framers faced an uphill battle in convincing all 13 states that it was in their best interest to form a federal government. This debate can be seen as an early manifestation of the enduring tension between “big government” and “small government.” Even though the federal government of that time was far more limited than it is today, it still represented a form of “big government” that had to contend with many of the same critiques leveled by libertarians today. The framers’ greatest inspiration was their nearly obsessive desire to construct a government that would, by its very design, prevent the rise of a dictator. “It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” – Alexander Hamilton One of the key principles was that it should be the structure of the government itself that prevents abuse of power, not merely the laws it creates. This is why so much of The Federalist Papers is devoted to discussing which responsibilities should fall to the legislative, judicial, or executive branches. It was also part of the rationale behind making the Constitution difficult to amend, as the framers hoped to limit the extent to which any bad actor could consolidate power. ...

Summary John Maynard Keynes would go on to become a household name in economics, ultimately achieving the highest honor of becoming an adjectival eponym for his ‘Keynesian’ style of economic thinking. Keynes published this monumental work in 1936 during the height of the Great Depression, a period that baffled many classical economists. The primary issue at the time was cripplingly high unemployment rates paired with low demand, triggering a deflationary spiral. Theoretically, this situation should not have occurred because higher unemployment would typically lead to lower wages due to increased competition for jobs. Lower wages should, in turn, result in higher profits for investors, leading to increased investment and, subsequently, higher employment. This is what economists call equilibrium, where demand and supply are perfectly balanced. So why wasn’t this happening during the Great Depression? Classical economists believed that some form of market distortion, such as fiscal or monetary policy, must have been at play. Keynes, however, argued that the distortion they sought was not the result of policy but an inherent feature of economies themselves. While it might be simplistically argued that free markets will eventually find the prized equilibrium, Keynes believed that economies could get stuck along the way, like a climber snagged on a ledge. He summarized this idea in his best-known quote: “The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.” The central idea of Keynes’ The General Theory is that the level of employment is not determined by the price of labor but by the aggregate demand in the economy. This marked a departure from classical schools of thought, which assumed that supply would naturally generate demand. Keynes observed several circumstances that could disrupt this process. For example, wages tend to be “sticky,” meaning they are more easily adjusted upwards than downwards. As long as demand grows, wages can be sustained, but when demand contracts, employers are more likely to lay off workers than reduce wages. Moreover, Keynes emphasized the role of behavioral economics, noting that while thrift may be a virtue for individuals, widespread saving instead of investing can contract overall demand. One solution Keynes proposed for governments to stimulate a stagnating economy was through active spending. In hindsight, this is precisely what helped pull the U.S. out of the Great Depression. Between FDR’s New Deal and the massive government investment spurred by World War II, these actions acted like defibrillators, restarting the economic engine. Why is government spending sometimes necessary to combat deflation and high unemployment? It starts with a Keynesian concept known as the multiplier. This principle connects to another economic concept—the marginal utility of income. If someone with no money is given $1, that first dollar has a huge impact. Each additional dollar continues to have an effect, but eventually, the impact diminishes. This principle is known as the Marginal Propensity to Consume (MPC). Classical economists assumed that each new dollar would be equally likely to be saved or invested, but Keynes’ MPC demonstrates why this is not always true. In a deflationary spiral, the problem becomes how to encourage consumption when prices continue to fall. The multiplier effect shows that if you target individuals with a high MPC, you can increase overall demand. Government programs that direct funds to those most likely to spend can create a virtuous cycle, where every dollar spent by the government increases the gross domestic product (GDP) by a multiplier. For example, the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which allocated over $780 billion to boost economic demand, had an estimated multiplier effect ranging from 1.5 to 2.5—meaning every dollar spent could add up to $2.50 to the GDP. ...

Stanisław Lem’s Solaris, language and the void, and why contact might never mean mutual understanding.

Summary We are all familiar with the scientific method: observe, theorize, experiment, and repeat. This algorithm is humanity’s most effective tool for understanding the universe. However, Bill Hammack introduces readers to what he calls the “engineering method.” While it’s commonly believed that scientists create knowledge and engineers apply it, Hammack argues that this perspective greatly underestimates the engineer’s role in discovery. He asserts that engineers must be the ultimate pragmatists, unable to wait for perfect knowledge. Instead, they often operate by “rules of thumb” that push the boundaries of what is known. Hammack illustrates this through various examples, from the thickness of cathedral supports to the invention of the O-ring. Unlike scientists, engineers are constrained by cultural contexts, limited resources, and, most critically, the need to deliver solutions within time constraints. A compelling example is the ‘100-year wind’ concept, where engineers must design structures, such as skyscrapers, to withstand rare but severe events predicted to occur within the next century. The challenge is that we often lack a century’s worth of wind data for an area, forcing engineers to rely on modern “rules of thumb,” involving complex, yet pragmatic, statistical predictions based on limited or incomplete data. The crux of Hammack’s argument is that while a mathematician might balk at the imprecision of these methods, engineers must proceed not in a world of perfect knowledge, but in one driven by experiential understanding. Often, the only way to answer a question is to build the answer. ...

Summary McCullough gives a fairly detailed account of the first year of the American Revolution against the British. Focusing largely on George Washington, this book is more interested in the military maneuvers of both sides without getting too bogged down in the political philosophy of the moment. The first year of America’s Revolution was a dark one, but by its end several close calls set the stage for surprise attack by Washington which reinvigorated a fledgling nation’s resistance and would be forever memorialized by the famous “Crossing the Delaware” painting. ...

Summary Adam Smith lays out one of the first exhaustive accounts of how a complex, developed economy functions. Published in 1776 during some “difficulties” in the relationship between Britain and one of its colonies, Smith makes the case for fundamental economic concepts like free markets and the division of labor. The first book, by far my favorite, presents the fundamentals of Smith’s concepts of value, wages, and labor. One of his key observations concerns the transport of goods. He argues that without the capacity of water to transport heavy items easily, civilization itself would have been greatly hampered. This insight helps explain why civilizations emerged near bodies of water that were easily navigable, most notably in the Mediterranean. It is always fascinating to observe how the limitations imposed by an environment affect the systems that find ways to thrive within those given constraints. ...

Marcus Aurelius, one of the greatest emperors Rome ever produced, wrote a series of notes to himself. It is believed that these notes were never meant to be published but were part of his personal practice of self-improvement and philosophical reflection. Scattered with exhortations to not bend beneath the pressures of life, the reader is presented with a picture of life as something to be endured: “Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds.” ...

I try to review every book I read or listen to, but I have a hard time with these types of books because they are summary style. How would you rate a Wikipedia article? You may be able to, but odds are the rating would have more to do with the facticity of the article versus its writing. I have no knowledge on the topic, so I cannot review that aspect. What I can say is that this did a decent job introducing the Ottomans to a Western reader, although you would do well to get a mental picture of Eastern Europe and Western Asia as there are so many places mentioned. Your eyes will probably glaze over unless you can picture their locations in your head. The reader for this audiobook was not fantastic. I will definitely want to dig more into the Ottomans, but probably after getting a better picture of early European history.

Summary A concise account of one of America’s most popular presidents and his infamous assassination. Thoughts The authors’ intent with this book was to write history in a way that was “fun.” They largely succeeded; Killing Kennedy reads similarly to a tabloid, filled with murders, conspiracies, villainous Russian leaders, and, of course, lots of sex. In defense of Bill O’Reilly, if ever there was a presidency that lent itself to this lens of analysis, it was JFK’s. Serving from 1961 to 1963, JFK was at once the most powerful man in the world and nearly the youngest president in US history. In those three short years, America navigated through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, and the inception of the Vietnam War. This book is a quick and easy way to get some context surrounding America’s 35th president, as long as the writing style doesn’t grate too strongly against your sensibilities. ...

I enjoyed the book, although I was looking for something a little more Zee Frank, with more interesting anecdotes. Apparently, the fact that wasps can recognize faces just isn’t cool enough for me. The book’s central push is to challenge the assumptions we make about intelligence. We often assume that intelligence has to look like “human intelligence.” This would have been quite controversial fifty years ago, but it seems to be almost common knowledge now. My biggest complaint about this book is that it picks an interesting subject—animal intelligence, or intelligence in general—yet fails to say much meaningful about it. There is a common trope throughout history where someone will say something like “play is what makes humans different from animals,” only for science to eventually realize that animals play too, and therefore “play” isn’t the thing that makes humans different from animals. [a: Frans de Waal|112082|Frans de Waal|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1222704792p2/112082.jpg] dismantles many more of these potential differences between humans and animals to drive home the point that humans aren’t different from animals—which seems both right and wrong to me. Of course, when looking at the evolutionary tree, there isn’t a special branch from which humans came. But this then makes the question around the success of humans even more interesting. If animals engage in all the behaviors that were thought to be exclusive to the human domain, why haven’t they dominated the environment in a way remotely similar to humans?